I think something has recently changed about my environment that is causing an intermittent busy cursor while building in Visual Studio 2010. The cursor is busy about 50% of the time. I have Resharper 5.1 and Visual Assist X installed. Any ideas?

has to be one of the 2 add-ons because ive installed visual studio many times over the years and every time, never had a problem with it, unless there was a problem with the network.
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ChristianOct 11 '11 at 11:16

devenv /SafeMode (launching Visual Studio without any add-ons or extensions enabled) results in the same frequency of busy cursor during build.
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Aidan RyanOct 12 '11 at 12:05

2 Answers
2

I thought this is quite common when we are working with Visual Studio + some code analysis addins. I am also using VS2010 and Resharper 5.1 and getting the busy cursor immediately when rebuild starts. As you also have said it's busy around 50% of time. I suspended the resharper and tried, still the same. Core1, 3, 5 and 7 are seem to be busy and so that's not too un-fair to show the busy cursor in this case. However, there is not much difference with smaller solutions; still the cursor is busy around 50% of time.

The only option that work for me is changing the busy cursor in windows "Mouse Pointer" option which is not an impressive solution. The default busy cursor is annoying sometimes, so as the final thing, if you cannot find a proper solution this might help. I just changed the busy cursor and feeling quite comfortable than previously.

EDIT

The question here is whether the VS2010 shows the busy cursor unnecessarily. It seems to be it's actually getting busy time to time when building and busy cursor comes and goes. Changing the busy cursor in window doesn't make any difference but gives us the feeling that mouse is still somewhat responsive.

I often go the the Build Menu and Cancel the build when the cursor is busy. So, the VS IDE is not totally unresponsive. Time to time it responds to the user activities but not at a satisfactory level.

You still can't interact when the cursor is busy though, right?
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Aidan RyanOct 10 '11 at 19:00

@AidanRyan: Cannot interact at a satisfactory level but we can do some activities like Build->Cancel etc. I've added an edit to my answer. I think VS should have more responsive than this. But unfortunately there is no way to improve it's behaviour AFAIK. Some time ago I thought to enhance it's performance and followed some tips on several articals but didn't find any workable tip on this matter.
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CharithJOct 10 '11 at 22:43

@AidanRyan: Changed the default busy circle mouse pointer to a busy arrow and see. You will feel some better... The other workaround is using msbuild to build the solution (if it takes a long time to build your solution) if you want to keep the IDE responsive while it's building. However, we cannot do much when it's building, but viewing code/design.
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CharithJOct 11 '11 at 12:25

While this answer does not explain the cause, you're right, changing the mouse cursor reduces the psychological impact of the symptom.
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Aidan RyanOct 12 '11 at 12:08

I usually have this when other background software run like antivirus and almost out of memory. The antivirus always lock a file for long time. Perhaps you can disable it.

Added more RAM or upgrade the CPU are options. I use Core 2 duo with 3 GB and that is getting slower.

More than 30 projects in VS 2010. make it is busy. Perhaps devide your project into different solution.

Perhaps you can check your extension installed. What will happen if you resetpkgs your visual studio or reset yur development environtment.
If run normal then you can suspect of your extension. This is my way to make it my vs 2010 faster.

Unload project when it is not needed. I usually use this so VS 2010 dont built all in solution.

Close all open document in VS 2010 that is not needed / edited. Save more resources.
Upgrade to VS 2010 SP1.
Apply auto update from Windows update. This is usually do able since I let my autoupdate run.
Change your Windows XP to Windows 7. Sometimes busy means it is not responsive to UI but build process has done. I use Windows XP sometimes slower and then VS 2010 display Not responsive in the titlebar and task manager need to be closed/kill
When don't use TFS.. disconnect (or remove it)
make it your dll local as possible, or domn;t put your your dll in the GAC. This make slower when compiler try to search theirs dll dependensi.